Transgender and Non-binary students

@Jeffrey Harrison I'm Jessi, the Product Manager for Core. Adding pronoun customization and de-coupling them from gender is on our roadmap for work this summer along with several other changes for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Seeing that you're passionate about this topic, would you be open to a conversation about how we can better support your community?

To any who see this reply: if you are interested in sharing your feedback regarding DE&I with me directly, please email me directly at jessica dot walters at blackbaud dot com. You can also trigger an email in my inbox by commenting on any of the Ideas Jeffrey pasted above.

Thanks, all!

@Jeffrey Harrison
Thank you for listing these. I've voted for them all. We are also struggling with the inconsistent name usage in Blackbaud.

Hello all! I'm here to first say, “Thank you!” to all who sent me an email. I'm embarrassingly behind in replying, but I've saved those emails for this summer when the team will begin making changes.

I also have a couple important follow-up questions:
1) Is it better in your community to always default to Preferred-else-first name, or do you need the option in a lot of places (besides the transcript and exports) to make a decision about how the name will display?
2) Is it harder to preserve the identity of transgender students, or is it more challenging to support a student who is not yet out to their parents?
3) Would you always prefer the same name format for consistency and ease of reporting, or is it very much dependent on where a user is looking at the student's information? (think: directory, academic profile, Core profile, class roster, gradebook, etc.)

We're trying to determine whether Preferred name is always appropriate or if we need to take User name format far more broadly than it was ever used before.

Thanks for your contributions!

@Jessi Walters In our school we have stopped using the “preferred name” field for a few reasons:

1. Some student's legal names are dead names. If we put their chosen name in the “preferred name" field, their "first name" (legal name) is still visible to them on their contact card (and in a few other areas of the system) and it triggers them.
2. Students are able to see the "first name" and “preferred name” of other students when going to their contact card. The school could face serious legal problems, as this could lead to cases of outing other students as transgender.
3. We learned “chosen name” is more appropriate, as “preferred” implies that there is a choice in what the person wants to be called.
4. There are still places in the system that default to first name (not preferred name)

To remedy #1, we did the following:

1. Put their chosen name in the first name field, and
2. Created an “admin view only” field called “legal name." This field is only available to select staff, and is only used on the transcript.
3. Now our transcripts print with the “First and Last name” fields and below that we added our admin view only “legal name” field.
   

@Brian Gray - Here are some screenshots:

Most students end up having identical “first and last name” and “legal name," but this is helpful in cases where the names differ. This was the only way we could ensure students wouldn't see their own or other student's “dead names."

@Jessi Walters - What we still struggle with is having chosen names displayed for students who are not out yet at home. They want their teachers and classmates to call them by one name (and have it appear on lists, rosters, etc.), but they don't want their parents to know. Right now there is no way to ensure teachers and students can see the name WITHOUT parents seeing it. We thought profile notices could solve this, but if they happen to see that big yellow alert on their account while looking over a teachers shoulder, they get alarmed and feel it's pointing a big finger at them.

There are so many little nuances that could carry huge consequences. We're just trying to help our students feel safe and accepted while at school, and this system can make or break that.

@Brian Gray - We do use core as the information source. Magnus is the only system where we would want the legal name to be accessible to the managing staff, but unfortunately that information doesn't sync. I provide a spreadsheet of student chosen and legal names to our nurses and that seems to be working, but it would be nice to have it auto populate in Magnus.